Advantages of Recurring Donations

Monthly recurring donations are the easiest & most convenient way that you can give and ensure that our programs receive your support – in case you cannot attend your chapter meeting that month.

Recurring donations provide a predictable income source we can depend on to invest in our grants program and our member services. They also help us increase our efficiency and reduce costs, allowing us to help even more women and girls.

So what does it mean to be always a recurring donor? This means that your credit card or bank account will be charged on a certain date on a monthly basis according to your specific instructions.

There are many ways to set up an computerized recurring donation:
Before online giving came onto the scene, accepting monthly recurring donations from supporters was a fairly difficult exercise. You had to get donors to commit to making regular financial contributions (usually by phone or direct mail) and then you had to make certain that they actually followed through. Not that supporters had the wrong intentions, it was just easy to forget to mail in checks every month. Forgetful donors meant sending more mail and positioning more calls for reminders.

These headaches are area of the reason why so many organizations have shied from monthly recurring giving and centered on securing yearly gifts off their supporters instead. Actually, while monthly giving makes up about over fifty percent of yearly fundraising totals at many international nonprofits, here in the U.S. recurring donors generally constitute significantly less than 10% of confirmed nonprofit’s supporter base. Many organizations (probably most organizations) have no monthly giving program whatsoever. Visit this website to get more insight, PaidForGood

With greater usage of online fundraising systems, however, accepting monthly recurring donations has become a realistic option for nonprofits of most sizes. When a donor subscribes for a recurring donation online, there are no checks to mail and no reminders needed; much of the trouble and hassle has been eliminated. In light of the advances, it could be time for your nonprofit to consider developing its online recurring giving program. Below are a few of the huge benefits that regular monthly donations may bring:

1. Increased Revenue
Recurring donations provide an easy way to boost the lifetime value of your donors. One study showed that donors who gave one-time gifts gave an average of $97 dollars in ’09 2009, while recurring donors averaged $220 dollars for the entire year. Even though monthly donors generally give much small amounts on a per gift idea basis, the aggregate amount that they give during the period of a year more often than not adds up to more than the average one-time present amount. When you combine this higher annual giving level with the fact that recurring donors have higher retention rates across years, you can get started to understand why recurring giving is such a deceptively effective upgrading strategy. While you convert a one-time donor into a recurring donor you obtain more every year and you have an elevated potential for keeping that donor from year to year.

2. Best For Nonprofits and Donors
A monthly surprise allows supporters to spread the financial impact with their giving across the entire year, lessening the acute financial impact. Supporters wrap up giving more with an annual basis, but the distribution of payments over the year makes the commitment more manageable. This makes recurring giving a particularly effective way to increase surprise amounts from committed supporters who might not have the money to go up and be “major donors” with larger one-time gifts. Also, from the nonprofit’s perspective, recurring donations give a relatively nonthreatening way of asking donors for larger financial commitments. Instead of asking for a growing lump sum every year, the organization can require an inferior monthly present that adds up to a larger gross annual total. The low monthly figure will come across as less aggressive to donors, making them much more likely to consider to your request.

3. Improved Cash Flow
Recurring donations can even be extremely beneficial from an operational perspective. It’s quite typical for nonprofits to receive most their income throughout a couple months throughout the year. Part of this is due to the seasonal nature of giving (somewhere in the neighborhood of 33% of individual gifts are created through the holiday season) and part of the is because of the actual fact that fundraising is commonly cyclical. If an organization has its big fundraising event in December, and it’s other major fundraising campaign during May and June, then it’s revenue is likely to be concentrated in those months. This introduces operational challenges (particularly for smaller organizations). Revenue may be confined to certain months over summer and winter, but operating costs are generally spread out pretty evenly. Because of this, organizations can wind up having insufficient cash on hand through the down months to function optimally. Creating a steady blast of recurring donations can lessen this imbalance and offer essential support during an organization’s fallow periods.

4. Better Planning
Being a corollary to the cash-flow point, an adult monthly recurring donation program can also help a business improve its long-range planning and decision-making. Revenue from recurring donations is a lot more predictable than revenue from one-off gifts. Once some data has been accumulated, an organization may easily calculate the common quantity of months its recurring donors continue to make monthly gifts and the common amount of new recurring donors it acquires each month. Using these numbers the nonprofit can model out it’s projected income from recurring donations with a higher degree of accuracy. Being able to predict income beforehand supports longer range budgeting and decision-making. It’s a lot easier to invest in hiring a fresh employee or piloting a fresh program (for example) if you understand you will be in a position to cover these costs with recurring revenue.

5. Cost Effective
There’s no need for repeat solicitation with a recurring gift. Once you’ve converted a donor into the recurring giving program, the gifts continue indefinitely before donor decides to avoid. Needless to say, you’ll desire a retention technique to encourage continued engagement, however the costs of maintaining recurring donors are usually lower than total annual givers.

Developing Your Own Recurring Giving Program
Recurring donation programs seem to be great- so, why doesn’t everyone have one? Well, like most other good things, they remember to build. But if you’re interested in reaping the benefits associated with regular monthly donations, they may be worth the investment. You merely have to have somewhat of patience. Within the coming weeks we’ll follow up with an increase of advice on ways to get started creating and growing your own recurring donation program. In the meantime, don’t forget that you may easily integrate requests monthly donations into the existing fundraisers. It won’t catapult someone to immediate success, but it’s the easiest way to really get your feet wet and begin testing out different appeals!